Mr. Mom

So on a perfectly beautiful evening there I was watching this woodpecker feed its young while a horde of mosquitoes fed on me.

The thing about mosquitoes is that I don't even get a welt anymore. Not even a slight red spot. Mosquito bites don't itch. They don't scratch. They're just a nuisance for me, so I put up with them.

You can always count on a bug to try to make a perfectly good evening miserable.

The interesting thing about this particular woodpecker was that he's a single parent. He obviously didn't lay the eggs on his own, but somewhere down the line in the nesting process the female died and this male took over raising the young all by himself.

He's a Mr. Mom of the deep woods and I must admit, he's doing an admirable job.

He's a black-backed woodpecker and every five to 15 minutes he'd return back to the nest from hammering grubs out of dead trees. The young in the nest (I think two have survived, maybe more) seem to be doing just fine.

Dad, however is looking a little harried. The feathers around his neck are a bit out of whack and he looks, well, he looks tired.

I can't say as I blame him.

The annoying thing about black-backed woodpecker young is they call and call and call and call.

They never actually seem to stop calling, which is sort of odd for a bird. Most nestlings shutup when the parents aren't around. Not black-backeds. They make quite a racket, which, of course, makes it fairly easy to find their nests, provided they aren't 150 feet in the air.

This particular nest is fairly low, maybe 15 feet, which makes it pretty ideal for photography.

It's also unique in that this male is raising these young all by his lonesome.

My bird experts tell me that's pretty rare. If he can hold in there a week or so more, I suspect his effort will have been a success. The young have grown quite a bit in the past week and are beginning to hang their heads out the nest hole when the old man isn't around.

At any rate, I spent the better part of three hours or so watching this woodpecker feed his young the other night, which, of course, makes me sort of weird.

The woods are a rather pleasant place and when you get sick of the woodpecker, there's usually a bluebird or a deer to watch. I also found a chickadee nest as well and a couple of sapsuckers the other day.

Of course I'm a little worried about the young, you know, growing up with a single parent and all. They're bound to get in trouble, experiment with drugs or hang out with the woodpeckers from the wrong side of the woods. But still, they're sort of fun to watch.

I hope they make it.

Knock on, er, wood.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.